When Shadows Fall
by Briar Rose Bramble
Summary: When a beautiful thief turns to Father Joseph during Confession, he's drawn into a world he never knew existed. OUAT/Tournament, completely AU. Rating applies to later chapters.
1. The Beautiful Thief

_**AN**: This hasn't been seen by a beta, so please ignore any errors. Unless you'd like to correct them all, in which case you may consider yourself hired._

* * *

When Shadows Fall

"I'm not Catholic," is the first thing the woman on the other side of the screen tells him before Joseph has even had time to welcome her. "I know you can't offer me absolution, but I don't expect to be forgiven. I just have to talk to someone. Can I talk to you?"

Her voice is even, measured, but Joseph catches the impression, though the shadows and the screen, that she is not nearly as calm as she attempts to appear. She isn't one of his congregation, that much is certain, or anyone else from the small town. She has an accent that he can't place, for starters, but it's more than that. There's something unknown about her, _unknowable_.

"Penance is a sacrament," he begins to explain. It pains him to turn people away, especially if they are desperate. Joseph understands desperation.

"Oh, I know," she replies. "I was confirmed once, although not into your church." The breezy quality slips from her voice and a tiny slither of uncertainty creeps in. "I certainly don't mean any disrespect, it's just that I think I might not exist by this time tomorrow."

Joseph has always dreaded these conversations. There's training for them, but that isn't quite enough to prepare you all the same. He wants to help her, of course he does, but that's never been any guarantee of success in the past.

"If you are afraid for your life, you should contact the police." He hesitates, teetering between the detached aid of his ministry and becoming involved in whatever is haunting her. "There's a phone in the vestry, if you like?"

There's a rustle of cloth as the women pulls herself upright. When she speaks, her voice has regained its former briskness.

"It's not quite like that."

"The number for the Samaritans is by the phone," he adds.

"I don't want to kill myself," she sighs. "Although if it comes to it, I will try." She sounds decided, almost abrupt, and it frightens him. "Rather _that_ than the alternative."

Her words don't make much sense to Joseph, but he can hear the need to confess in her voice, that urge to unburden oneself. He certain he won't be able to help, that she needs something far beyond the penance and forgiveness that he can offer, but he finds himself wanting to try.

"Suicide is a mortal sin." He's gentle. Joseph doesn't judge, isn't in a position to. "Nothing can be that bad, surely?"

There is a long silence, broken only the fitful hum of the ancient heating system and the wind in the trees outside.

Just when Joseph suspects that the uneasy quiet will stretch on forever, the woman takes a shuddering breath.

"Does the church still offer sanctuary?" she asks. Her forced calm has gone and although she's not breathing like a woman close to hysterics, her voice is thick with tears and what sounds to Joseph like despair.

"Not for the last four hundred. We did have a frith stool here until the 60's though," he adds, helpfully. "It's in the museum now."

She laughs at that, although it's closer to a sob.

"Please don't cry," he begs quietly. "There must be someone who can help."

The light shifts as the women leans her forehead against the grill. "No, there's not." Joseph can just make out pale skin and tumbling dark hair. "'The Lord helps those who help themselves,'" she quotes.

"Strictly speaking, that isn't scripture," Joseph finds himself correcting her, absurdly. Years in the seminary can turn the most generous soul into something of a pedant. "The idea's first found in Ancient Greek. Aesop wrote about it."

She shuffles again, and the following silence is broken by the sound of a nose being blown with determination.

"What's your name?" she asks.

It's not a difficult question, although the answer seems hard. "In here, I am simply your confessor," he stalls.

"I've told you I might die, Father," she chides gently. "Yours might be the last voice I hear; can't I at least have your name?"

He swallows, nervous again. "It's Joseph," he answers at last. "Father Joseph Macavoy."

"Joseph," she repeats, and his name sounded heavy in her mouth. "I like you, Joseph. Can you pray for me? Even though I'm a sinner?"

"We are all sinners." This sounds sincere, even to Joseph. He is an authority on sin, after all.

"Not like me," comes the reply. "At least you are only hurting yourself. I've brought death to this town of yours."

Joseph freezes, uncertain of what he just heard.

"It follows me," she continues. "Sometimes I think I'm free of it, but it's always there. It's patient. Why would death stalk me if I can be saved?"

He swallows, searching for words, any words. "Death is part of life."

"Maybe death is the wrong word. Evil. Corruption." There's another pause. "You hear that?"

The wind has changed, throwing the evening's rain hard against the east window.

"The unnatural dark, the wind, the rain? I brought that with me, too, so close on my heels that I could have tripped it. It's how they hunt in the daytime; hide the sun away and grow the shadows tall."

Joseph wonders if it's drugs, or if she might even be dangerous. All types will wander into the church when the weather's bad. He's ashamed to think it, but he's seen what life can do to people. What it's done to him.

"I only came in here to rest," she admits, as if she has read his thoughts. "I couldn't run any further and I remembered the old tales, Elizabeth Woodville racing into Westminster with all her luggage to claim sanctuary." She sighs, and it's a soft sound. "It's funny what you remember."

"They knocked holes in the walls to bring all her furniture in," Joseph recalls, the pedant in him happy to display his knowledge even to a woman apparently as disturbed as this one. Shaking himself, he recalls his duty. "If you don't want to use the phone, perhaps I could call you a ta—"

A crash outside shocks him into silence.

"They're here," the woman sighs. "I had hoped for a little longer." Her shadow shifts through the grate as she pulls her coat about her shoulders, readying herself to leave. Although she frightens him, Joseph finds he fears her leaving even more. "Don't worry, they won't come inside."

"Surely it's just the storm?" Joseph pleads, although when the rain and wind became so strong he does not know. A glance at his watch tells him that he's been sat with this woman far longer that he realised, but it's still too early for the failing light.

"It is," she agrees, which only unsettles him further when he recalls his question.

The shadows shift again, but this time the woman seems quite still. Out of the corner of his eye, Joseph sees one of them stretch and begin to shift slightly, as if searching for something. He tells himself that he's imagining things and turns his head to stare directly into the gloom.

It pauses as if scenting the air, and his stomach fills with dread.

"They're just shadows," the woman whispers. "They won't be able to hurt you, although they will eat you up with fear or guilt if you let them."

"What are you?" he whispers, trembling at the sight, shadow's now oozing in the narrow space of the confessional box, hemming him in.

"A thief," she replies, and he can hear the sound of the cap being unscrewed from a bottle. "I came in here for holy water, but I'm afraid I may have taken the whiskey from you jacket as well." There is the sloshing sound of the bottle being raised followed by a cough.

"It's cheap," Joseph finds himself apologising, patting his jacket and finding it empty. He hadn't even noticed the missing weight, but that doesn't seem important right now. "What do you need the holy water for?"

"You neither need nor want the answer to that question," she answers. Another crash from outside, followed by an inhuman howl seems to underline her argument. A shadow brushes against Joseph's arm, sensationless and numbing at the same time, and he fears he may vomit.

"Head for the altar," the woman advises. "Pray to your god; you'll be safe. Just please, don't leave the church tonight."

She stands and Joseph almost trips himself up in his haste to leave the confessional and those awful shadows. He stumbles, his unpolished shoes catching on the low step, and slim arms catch him. The woman is every bit as beautiful as he feared she might be, small and sad, but steely with it. It's hard to tell in the darkness, but he thinks her eyes are blue.

"Good bye, Joseph," she tells him. She's so small that she has to reach up to kiss his mouth. She tastes like whiskey and rainwater, and smells faintly of death. "Wait till the sun is up, no matter what you hear."

With that she is gone, striding the length of the small church and pulling open the north door. Rain sweeps in, darkening the floor. She pauses, dipping her fingers into the stoup and bringing the water to her forehead in a hasty cross before raising her hood, then the door is closed and she is gone.

Looking round, Joseph realises that all the shadows have begun to move, although they seem more sluggish now that the woman has left. He scurries towards the altar, heeding her advice, sinking before the table to press his face into the cloth.

Prayer seems necessary, but the words won't come. _Please_, he pleads again and again. _Please_.

Despite the woman's warning, the sounds and the rain begin to die away, and Joseph realises she's leading them away, and relief and sadness threaten to overwhelm him. Pulling himself to his feet, he peers down the nave. The shadows are still.

Now no longer paralysed by fear, he glances round. The sanctuary has been disturbed and the almery is open. It only takes one glance to see that the Oil of the Sick is missing. He'll find the ampulla later, caught under the altar cloth, but suddenly Joseph recalls the scent of olives that lingered about the woman and understands that she had anointed herself in readiness for death.

Unconsciously, he reaches for the bottle inside his jacket. It isn't until the whisky burns at his throat that he realises that his thief had returned it to him.

His thief. She stole sacred oils, holy water, his whisky, and he recalls as his fear begins to ebb from his tight muscles and uneasy, aching bladder, she even stole a kiss. She's robbed him of the notion that there is nothing out there in the darkness, nothing waiting in the corners of the night, and he doesn't even know her name.

* * *

He's shaken roughly awake by a man with cropped black hair and a battered leather jacket.

"Did anything get inside the church?" the stranger demands. "Did anything touch you?"

"What?" Joseph blinks up at his assailant, his body aching from a night on the stone floor, his tongue feeling heavy and unwieldy in his mouth. "Who are you?"

"Did anything get inside the church?" the man repeats, talking slowly as one might to a child. Joseph remembers the empty bottle on the floor next to him and nausea floods his mouth.

"Only the shadows," Joseph gasps, between desperate swallows.

The man releases him abruptly, glancing round the sacristy, wiping his hands on the black cloth of his trousers. "What happened to the oils?"

It's only then that Joseph notices the collar and realises that the man is also a priest.

"A thief. She led them away. Walk out into the storm." Joseph struggled to his feet, shaking his head to shift the heavy, treacly sensation from behind his eyes. "Did you find her? She was small, dark hair."

"Shit." The man kicks out at the empty bottle and it spins away, disappearing under the altar cloth. "What did she tell you?"

"You believe me, don't you?" Joseph realises. This strange priest seems angry, perhaps a little scared, but not shocked. It occurs to Joseph that this man already knew about the unnatural storm, already knew about the shadows. "What happened last night? What were those things? What does the _church_ have to do with those things?"

The man scrubs his hand across his face. "Honestly, you don't really want to know," he replies.

Joseph shakes his head, no. The woman had told him the same thing, and he'd allowed her to march out into goodness knew what while he hid his face in fear. "I need to help."

The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, but Joseph can feel the rightness of them. He's always been afraid; of judgement, of failure, of never being good enough, either as a priest or as a man. Fear cripples him. Last night he was terrified beyond reason, yet one woman dared to walk out into the storm alone.

He needs to find her, help her. Remembering the way she squared her shoulders before heading out into the night, Joseph realises he want to _be_ her.

The stranger throws himself down into one the choir pews and pulls a hip flask from his pocket. Judging by the light, it can't be later than eight o'clock in the morning, yet he takes a deep pull of the flask before offering it to Joseph.

Joseph shakes his head again. He longs for the comfort of oblivion, needs it to still the tell-tale tremble that's already gripped his hands, but he needs a clear head more.

"Believe me, you don't want to know," the man reiterates. He's tired, exhausted even. "Once you know, you can never go back to not knowing. Once you know, you'll be a part of it. Now tell me, what happened to the oils?"

"The woman," Joseph answers, although he "She anointed herself, then ran out into the rain."

The other man is – or was – a priest, and needs no further explanation.

"We didn't find a body." He states it bluntly, but the relief Joseph feels is almost overwhelming. It must show on his face, for the stranger shakes his head. "That's not necessarily a good thing."

* * *

_To be continued..._


	2. The Brave Thing

When Shadows Fall

Chapter Two – The Brave Thing

* * *

They seal the church behind them. The strange priest – he introduces himself as Father Douglas – retrieves a bright yellow roll of tape from his car and marks the north and south doors with hazard warnings, before motioning for Joseph to climb into the battered Micra.

"The sanctuary will have to be rededicated," he shrugs, clambering in beside him. "We'll blame it on storm damage. They'll be told that you've been reassigned while funds are raised for repairs."

"They'll just be left without a church?" Though his parishioners may have their doubts, Joseph is dedicated to their wellbeing and the thought of leaving them – especially in the wake of such a profoundly dark night – leaves him uneasy.

"There are other churches." The gruff priest doesn't even bother to shrug this time, just pulls a pouch of tobacco from his jacket pocket and starts to roll a fag. "They'll be fine."

Father Douglas is clearly an authority on shifting shadows and malignant storms, but Joseph finds himself dismayed by this casual dismissal. He shifts uneasily in his seat, discomforted by the unfamiliar urge to question. Then he remembers the way the sad, beautiful woman had walked out into the storm and finds his voice.

"What if it comes back?"

The other priest pauses in the act of bringing his lighter towards his lips. "Then we'll come back," he replies, striking the flint and dipping his head to touch paper to flame.

Later Joseph will find such posing to be empty and pretentious, but at the time the nonchalant bravado is reassuring. Father Douglas is an authority, after all. With him there, the danger has already doubtless passed.

* * *

Father Douglas doesn't bother to ask where Joseph lives or to take him home to pack for the journey. Instead he forces the little car up through the gears until they are careering along the A1 and heading south. Middlesbrough disappears swiftly, terraces thinning to warehouses, giving way to fields.

Joseph folds his arms across his chest, hands tucked away so the shaking isn't too obvious, and stares anxiously out of the window as everything slips away. He feels sick, his head spinning, and his stomach complaining about the rumble of tires over tarmac and the scent of the air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror.

And fear.

The horror of last night seems strangely muted compared to this. Last night the shadows came alive and crawled inside the narrow confines of the confessional box, but the strange, sad woman had been only inches from him, reassuring despite her apparent frailty. She had known that he would be safe inside the church, had taken protection from the water that he himself had blessed.

_That's_ the difference between then and now. Then, only a few hours before, he had been Father Joseph of St Boniface. He had been terrified, lost, but he'd had an identity within the community. Now he's no one, the traditional comforts of his faith left somewhere behind them along the fast-vanishing road.

They pull into a motorway service station just past Sheffield and drink coffee from Styrofoam cups. Joseph throws it back up in the brightly lit toilets while his companion dozes in the car. _Please_, he begs again, his cheek resting against the flimsy cubicle wall. _Please_.

There's no alcohol in the shop next to the café, but he buys mints and bottled water, hoping to simply survive the trip. He doesn't ask where they are headed, terrified of what the answer may be.

They stop again at Frankley Services, by which point Joseph has lost any notion of just where in the country they may be. He doesn't leave the car, just continues to hug himself tightly, head throbbing and miserable. Father Douglas tries talking to him but soon gives up, content to stare moodily at the road ahead as they slowly cross the country.

It's early evening when the car finally pulls up outside a modern, red brick building and Father Douglas tells him to get out. It's a warm evening, somewhere far south of Middlesbrough.

Joseph shuffles unsteadily behind Father Douglas, through the door and down a long hallway, into a shabby communal sitting room beyond. The only occupant, a white haired priest in his seventies, looks up in greeting. His smile slips when he sees Joseph, and he raises a questioning eyebrow at Joseph's companion.

"He knows," Father Douglas explains by way of introduction, throwing himself down into a threadbare armchair.

"Oh, my dear boy," the old priest sighs, rising to take Joseph's hand. "What a terrible shame."

* * *

Joseph wonders if he made the right decision that day.

He remembers the fire he had felt in his belly, the conviction that this was his way to do God's work, but now he just feels numb. Looking inside himself, he finds the same emptiness as before. He prays, but he has no idea if his pleas are heard anymore, now that he's not even a real priest

Perhaps it would be easier if he knew what it was he is supposed to be fighting, but you see, no one does.

Not one person he meets seems to know what causes the storms or who controls the shadows. There are theories – that is the answer to every question Joseph has, '_there are theories_' – but no facts. Whatever is brewing in the darkness is like nothing the Church has encountered before. The shadows seemed to just appear one day, seeping into existence almost thirty years previously in a rage of storms and reports of strange visions. There had been occasional reports before, but nothing like their sudden, global presence, twisting into existence like something from a nightmare, bringing with them their unnatural dark and whispers of despair.

Then, as suddenly as they had arrived, they faded. The hastily assembled committee formed to tackle them had become redundant overnight, withering away until just a handful of agents were left in each country. When the shadows resurfaced in the UK some two years previously, there was no one left with the skill or knowledge to combat them.

Joseph remembers the sick feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with booze when he learnt that they don't even know when the shadows will next appear.

His nervous awe of Father Douglas had been stripped back with this new discovery as he realised that the angry young priest was simply another misfit trying to find a place for himself within a church that he had failed. His presence in Middlesbrough on the morning after the storm had been something of an afterthought, not leaving the seminary in Exeter until the storm clouds were already forming overhead, and driving through the night to reach the church at its epicentre, with little plan beyond than getting there.

It occurs to Joseph that perhaps Doug believed _he_ might hold the answers, not the other way around.

At least Joseph has companions now. Gruff, bitter Father Douglas, who drinks more than Joseph and rails against even God in his darker moments. Slow, shuffling Father Patrick with his shock of white hair and ponderous manner. Occasionally Father O'Hanlan, with his incongruous red hair and thick Scouse accent.

Joseph wasn't certain what he expected, but it was more than this. Four priests, with minimal funding and even less training, facing an enemy without a name, without a form.

* * *

Father Patrick tells Joseph that he has a gift for tracking.

Joseph flushes and stutters that he just listens to what other people have to say, uncomfortable with the praise, even if he seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting the preternatural. Since he's joined them, the order have been creeping ever closer to the eye of every storm.

When asked for his secret, Joseph answers honestly that if something feels odd, it usually is. People are perceptive, even if they do not know what it is they feel, even if they cannot believe it. He catches the bus, shops in the market, sits in the pub. Everywhere he goes, he listens.

Most evenings Joseph sits in the common room and watches the news. Not the national news, with its focus on politics or international affairs, but the local channels. Unnatural dark, dogs barking for no reason, the runaways and unexplained deaths, all of it has a meaning. Joseph has always been quiet, unassuming. He can sit by himself and listen to the world and no one even sees him, even here amongst his brethren.

* * *

The barmaid has dark hair that tumbles past her shoulders in soft curls. His heart stutters in his chest. She turns, and Joseph catches a pair of smiling dark eyes.

Disappointment should not have the power to hurt him still, but it cuts like a knife.

It's been four years now since the thief brought the storm of shadows in to his life_. Four years_. You would think that he would have accepted the fact that she is gone for good, but Joseph catches himself hoping. Long dark hair on a woman will cause his breath to catch in his throat, blue eyes will make him forget his words mid-sentence, a sad smile will fill his heart with regret.

He carries her memory with him like a talisman. When he falters, when the absurdity of their mission becomes too much, he recalls the image of her squaring her shoulders against the night, and somehow he finds the courage to continue. He likes to think that she guides him, nudging him to see the patterns of dark and light in the everyday gossip he overhears.

It pains him that he never learnt her name. All that time spent discussing church history and he didn't bother to ask.

Joseph likes to think she would be proud of him for trying to battle the shadows that plagued her, even if his efforts must seem woefully inadequate. He hopes she would look kindly on his attempts, overlook his weakness and his fears, indulgently overlook his poorer habits.

He sends a silent appeal for forgiveness to her as he orders a shot of house whisky from the woman who isn't her. If the plea sounds something like a prayer, Joseph knows that it's only force of habit, nothing more. He finds a table by the fire, where he won't be able to see the barmaid's familiar, disappointing silhouette, and sets about making himself invisible. Conversation rolls over and across him, tugging at his attention like the waves upon a shore.

Joseph sips at his drink, his knuckles white with tension despite the relaxed slump of his shoulders. The hairs at the back of his neck have been prickling for days. The pressure is high, the humidity a nightmare. It's what the locals refer to as _close. _They mean the uncomfortable sensation of being wrapped in warm, damp air, but to Joseph is suggests something else. Joseph suspects that_ something_ is close.

He takes another sip. He ought not even have that, given his expected task that evening, but he'll be more distracted by the want of it if he doesn't have at least one drink to steady his nerves. He tells himself that he needs a place to sit and wait, feeling the darkness roll in like a fog bank.

Joseph drinks less now, although sometimes more. His life is less routine and so are his needs, but he is still prey to the gnawing emptiness inside his chest. If he could do more, help more, things might be different. If only he was stronger, better. If only—

Sometimes Joseph wonders if he could have done more to help her, knowing then what he does now.

Doug has hinted that it would be kinder if she hasn't survived, at what happens to people who allow themselves to be tainted by darkness. He's caustic by nature, but he's curiously gentle when it comes to Joseph's memories of the Sad Lady, as if he suspects that Joseph feelings for her run deeper than simple gratitude for saving him, or sorrow and guilt for letting her walk out to face her death alone. Joseph is aware that the church monitors several individuals who have been discovered on the streets after an unnatural storm has past, but he has been very careful to never learn any more. It's not a kind fate, by any account.

If Joseph was asked to examine his devotion to a fading memory of a strange, unbalanced woman, he would have to acknowledge the brief minutes they spent together should not have been enough for any such attachment to form. He would also have to acknowledge that the greater part of his obsession with her isn't her beauty or her bravery, although by themselves they would be enough to hold him in her thrall, but rather the simple fact that she _liked_ him. She told him that she liked him. Joseph has known duty, known disappointment, but never has he known an easy affection like that she showed him. Listening to him, laughing with him, pressing kisses to his untried lips, more a dream of a woman than anyone of flesh and blood had ever been before.

He dreams about her sometimes. They're confusing dreams, never exactly happy, but they comfort him all the same. When first his dreams had caused him to wake, achingly hard, in the unfamiliar bed at the seminary, he had panicked, but now he longs for them. His reaction may unsettle him, but there is such comfort to be found in the ghost of her presence.

Joseph won't bring himself to completion when he wakes thus, not deliberately, but the days he wakes damp and uncomfortable are days he spends wrapped in a curious sense of peace.

The pub grows rowdier as the Friday night revellers crowd in, yet Joseph is never jostled, surrounded as he is by a tiny ocean of stillness, like an island in rough waters. He sips his drink until the glass is dry, listening, learning, remembering.

All too soon, the first drops of rain begin to fall, pattering gently against the windows, almost inaudible over the bright noise of the crowd, and Joseph pushes his chair back from the table.

It's time.


End file.
